How Do We Know the Moon ISN’T Made of Green Cheese?

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In a fable going back centuries within various cultures, a simpleton sees the reflection of the full moon in water and imagines that it’s a wheel of green (that is, unaged) cheese. It’s a tale that we often pass on to our children and that we discard with time, like belief in the Easter Bunny.
But how do you know that the moon isn’t made of green cheese?
Physicist Sean M. Carroll addressed this question in a lecture. After a few moments exploring physical issues like the moon’s mass, volume, and density and the (dissimilar) density of cheese, he gave this frank broadside:

The answer is that it’s absurd to think the moon is made of green cheese.

He goes on to say that we understand how the planets were formed and how the solar system works. There simply is no reason to suppose that the moon is made of green cheese and plenty of reasons to suppose that it’s not.

This is not a proof, there is no metaphysical proof, like you can prove a statement in logic or math that the moon is not made of green cheese. But science nevertheless passes judgments on claims based on how well they fit in with the rest of our theoretical understanding.

Let’s apply this thinking to the domain of this blog. To take one supernatural example, how do we know that Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead? The answer is the same: it’s absurd to think that Jesus was raised from the dead.

  • We know how death works. We see it in plants and animals, and we know that when they’re gone, they’re just gone. Rats don’t have souls. Zebras don’t go to heaven. There’s no reason to suppose that it works any differently for our favorite animal, Homo sapiens, and plenty of reasons to suppose that it works the same.
  • We know about ancient manuscripts. Lots of cultures wrote their ancient myths, and many of these are older than the books of the Old Testament: Gilgamesh (Sumerian), Enûma Eliš (Babylonian), Ramayana (Hindu), Iliad (Greek), Beowulf (Anglo-Saxon), Popol Vuh (Mayan), and so on. Bible stories appear to have been lifted from earlier stories from neighboring cultures–the Garden of Eden, global Flood, and Jesus resurrection stories, for example. For whatever reason, people write miracle stories, and we have a large and well-populated bin labeled “Legend” in which to put stories like those in the Bible.
  • We know that stories and legends can grow with time. We may have heard of Charles Darwin’s deathbed conversion to Christianity (false). Or that a decent fraction of Americans thought that President Obama is a Muslim. Or that aliens crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico. Or that a new star appeared in the night sky with the birth of North Korea’s Kim Jong Il. In our own time, urban legends so neatly fit a standard pattern, that simple rules help identify them. The Principle of Analogy is helpful here: if it looks like yet another legend (for example), that’s a good assumption to start with.
  • We know that humans invent religions. There are 42,000 denominations of Christianity alone, for example, and uncountably many versions of the myriad religions invented through history. There is little reason to imagine that Christianity is the one exception that is actually true.

Natural explanations are sufficient to explain Christianity.
Might the moon actually be made of cheese? Science doesn’t make unconditional statements, but we can assume the contrary with about as much confidence as we have in any scientific statement.
Might Jesus have been raised from the dead? Sure, it’s possible, but that’s not where the facts point. Aside from satisfying a preconception, why imagine that this is the case?

When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself;
and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it
so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power,
‘tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
— Benjamin Franklin

(This is a modified version of a post originally published 11/7/11.)
Photo credit: TV Tropes

Seven Billion People and Counting

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We passed the seven billion mark for the world’s population in 2011. Some say: No problem; God will provide. Climate change? Peak oil? Water shortages? God will make it all right.
Let’s consider one of these environmental problems, overpopulation. One of television’s venerable reality shows is 19 Kids and Counting, now beginning its 11th season. It’s the story of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their 19 children. No, they don’t adopt needy children, they make them the old-fashioned way.
Their web site is full of Christian talk, links to Creationist sites, and ads for Christian products. Here they talk about birth control.

We prayed and studied the Bible and found a host of references that told us God considered children a gift, a blessing, and a reward. Yet we had considered having another child an inconvenience [by the wife taking birth control pills] during that busy time in our lives, and we had taken steps to prevent it from happening.
We weren’t sure if Michelle could have any more children after the miscarriage, but we were sure we were going to stop using the pill. In fact we agreed we would stop using any form of birth control and let God decide how many children we would have.

This is the thinking of the Quiverfull movement, whose name comes from Psalm 127: “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.” From Quiverfull.com:

We exalt Jesus Christ as Lord, and acknowledge His headship in all areas of our lives, including fertility. We exist to serve those believers who trust the Lord for family size….

What kind of childish logic is this? Maybe during the Bronze Age, people could say, “We’ll let God decide how many children we’ll have,” but today we know very well where children come from and how to avoid them.
If you drink poison, you’re not letting God decide whether you live or not; you’re deciding. If you wave a gun in a bank, you’re not letting God decide whether you get arrested or not; you’re deciding. And if you have frequent unprotected sex, you’re not letting God decide how many children you have; you’re deciding to have as many as biologically possible.
Quiverfull aficionados reject all forms of birth control. But if vaccines, antibiotics, and a clean water supply aren’t messing with God’s plan, why would contraception—not killing an embryo but simply preventing it from happening—be a problem?
Back to the Duggar family, some have defended them by noting that they’re paying their way. They’re not asking for handouts, so what’s the problem?
The problem is that the planet has a finite carrying capacity. There’s only so much oil, fresh water regenerates only so fast, and so on. To make it worse, Americans live a rich life compared to most other people. For example, the resources that support these 19 kids, assuming they consume at the rate of average Americans, could support 600 average Kenyans.
“God will provide” might satisfy a child, but adults should know better.
In a discouraging article that concludes that religious believers will simply outbreed their competitors, author Tom Rees says:

In Israel and Palestine, both orthodox Jews and religious Muslims have astonishingly high birth rates, at least in part as a consequence of waging war “by other means.” Throughout the Islamic world, those who have the most extreme beliefs are also the most likely to endorse the desirability of large families.

That other guy thinks he’ll win by having more children? We’ll have even more than that—we’ll fight fire with fire!
We find similar thinking in the U.S. Again, from Quiverfull.com:

Quiverfull mothers think of their children as no mere movement but as an army they’re building for God.

But is that the way to play the game—we just descend to the other guy’s level? Is there no role for reason here? You don’t fight fire with fire, you fight it with water!

Man once surrendering his reason,
has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous,
and like a ship without rudder,
is the sport of every wind.
— Thomas Jefferson

(This is a modified version of a post originally published 10/31/11.)

Illogic of the Garden of Eden Story

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There’s a great Far Side cartoon with the caption “Fumbling for his recline button, Ted unwittingly instigates disaster.” The drawing shows some guy in an airplane seat, not paying attention as he reaches down to the buttons on the arm rest. There’s the light switch, the call button, and a switch for “Wings stay on” in the up position and “Wings fall off” in the down position.
In the Garden of Eden story, God is like the engineer who thought it smart to put the switch to jettison the wings in the arm rest. He knows that humans mustn’t eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, so where does he put it? In with the humans.
Maybe God didn’t know how to childproof the Garden—he was new at parenting, after all. But some safeguards seem like common sense. Why not tell Adam and Eve not to believe the snake? Or step in once the snake spoke to Eve? Or make the fruit of the tree look or smell unappealing? Or put the tree far away? Or put a wall around it? Or, if it’s not good for anything, not make the tree in the first place? God knows how to establish effective guards, since he put cherubim with a flaming sword to keep Mankind out of the Garden after the fall. Then why not guard the tree to keep Adam and Eve away?
It’s like the James Bond movies where the bad guy captures Bond and arranges a slow death (like Goldfinger’s metal-cutting laser slowly working its way up the table between Bond’s legs) and then leaves. Bond always escapes. If Goldfinger were serious about eliminating Bond (he’s not—it’s Hollywood), he would have just shot him. If God were serious about the danger of Adam eating the fruit (he’s not—this is a just-so myth), he wouldn’t have put the tree in the Garden.
I know what you’re thinking. Why treat this ancient myth as if it’s actually history? Why worry about the logic of a 3000-year-old myth? Because, according to four in ten Americans, it is history.
Different creation stories
The Documentary Hypothesis argues that the Garden of Eden story comes from the oldest parts of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) and was written around 950 BCE, while the six-day creation story was added almost 500 years later. To historians, this jumble of stories causes no problem. It’s fascinating to learn about what ancient cultures did. But the claim that Genesis is literally true runs aground in many places.
Consider the contradictions. In the comparison below, the 6-day creation story is from the Priestly (P) source, and the Eden story is from the Yahwist (J) source.

  • P says that man and woman are created together (Genesis 1:27), while J says that man came first (Gen. 2:20–22).
  • P says that they can eat from every tree (1:29), while J says that one tree is forbidden (2:27).
  • P says that plants preceded humans (1:11–13; 27–31), while J says that plants grew after Adam was placed in the Garden (2:4–9).
  • P says that animals preceded humans (1:25–7), while J says that God made animals after Adam to find him a companion (2:18–19).
  • P says that animals and birds come from water (1:20), while J says that they come from the ground (2:19).
  • J says that it’s not good for Adam to be alone and God finds him a companion, but Paul says that celibacy is better than marriage (1 Cor. 7:1, 9)

Older myths
Old though the J source is, it seems inspired by other Mesopotamian myths that are far older. The 18th century BCE Sumerian Atra-Hasis epic is another creation myth. In it, one of the gods creates lesser deities to do the farm work, but they eventually refuse. The gods create humans to take over, but all is not perfect. After twice 600 years (600 is a round number in Mesopotamian base-60 representation), “The country was as noisy as a bellowing bull.” The god of the wind was eventually fed up: “The noise of mankind has become too much. I am losing sleep over their racket.” His solution: a plague, then a famine, and finally a flood.
In this story, mankind is created to tend the gods’ garden (as was Adam—see Gen. 2:15). Eventually, they annoy one god enough that he decides to rid the world of them with a flood (see Gen. 6 ff). Noah’s age at the time of the flood (600 years) also has a parallel.
Take the story at face value, and not only is the Bible contradictory about the creation, but God is culpable (with the story spun to make it Man’s fault). Alternatively, we can see it as a version of a story inspired by a much older version from that region of the world. If it doesn’t make complete sense, okay, but understand that it’s just myth. And if you stick the Garden creation myth with the six-day-creation myth, don’t be surprised when they don’t match up. Neither approach does much to bolster claims of historicity.
Continue with part 2 here.

The church doesn’t like for people to grow up
because you can’t control grown-ups.
— John Shelby Spong

Tribulations of Leaving Religion

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You can leave a company with two weeks’ notice. You can leave a club or association by giving notice. But leaving Christianity often brings consequences.
What does your departure say to your fellow parishioners, and how will they respond?
For example, Rich Lyons (from the Living After Faith podcast) left his 20-year career as a Pentecostal minister. His departure cost him everything: respect in the community, house, job, career, marriage. He needed five years to get over his PTSD. And his experience is not uncommon for those leaving some denominations.
Why should it be this way? When you leave a company, they give you a going-away party. You can still hang out with your old workmates. Why isn’t it the same when you leave a Christian community? Why instead are apostates often cut off from their friends within the church and even their families?
I got some insight into this from an anecdote by Stephen King. In his book On Writing, he talks about a different kind of outcast. In small-town Maine in the early sixties, life wasn’t easy for a socially-awkward girl he calls Dodie.
For the first year and a half of high school, Dodie wore a white blouse, long black skirt, and knee socks to school every day. The same blouse, skirt, and socks. Every day. The blouse gradually became thinner and yellowed, the skirt frayed and patched.
The other girls kept her in her social place, first with concealed taunts, then with overt teasing. If you can’t earn a spot above someone else, you can push that person beneath you, and the other girls made sure that Dodie stayed in her place at the bottom.
But something happened during Christmas break sophomore year. Whether because of money she’d saved up or a Christmas windfall, Dodie returned to school changed. She wore stockings over newly shaved legs, her hair was permed, and her clothes were new—a fashionably short skirt and a soft wool sweater. She even had a confident new attitude to match her appearance.
This change in the social order couldn’t stand. The other girls didn’t celebrate her accomplishment. They turned on her. Under the relentless teasing, her new smile and the light in her eyes faded.
By the end of that first day, she was the same mouse at the lowest rung, scurrying the halls between classes, her books pressed to her chest and her eyes downcast.
As the semester progressed, Dodie wore the same clothes. Every day. They faded as their predecessors had, she kept to her previous place, and the teasing returned to normal. Someone had made a break for it and tried to escape, but they’d been brought back in line. The social structure was intact once again.
Christian apostates are different because they successfully leave, but some Christian churches take the next best option. Potential apostates within these communities know that they would leave behind more than just the customs and obligations of their sect. As Rich Lyons experienced, these communities use the stick of shunning, in which friends and even family must avoid all contact with apostates.
Thankfully, this draconian punishment is a threat for a small minority of Christians, but Church congregations are societies, just like high schools. High school hierarchies aren’t something you can just walk away from, like membership in a Rotary Club or art museum. High school societies can feel threatened and respond, and the same is true for churches.
Photo credit: Wikipedia

Bible Reading in Schools: Illegal for 50 Years

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Today is the 50th anniversary of the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case Abington v. Schempp, in which an eight-to-one majority declared that school-sponsored Bible reading was unconstitutional. Madalyn Murray O’Hair was the mother of a plaintiff in a similar case that was consolidated with Schempp. (O’Hair founded American Atheists, also in 1963. Above, see a photo of O’Hair, who Life magazine called “the most hated woman in America” a year later.)
But the battle continues
While it may be a day to celebrate a long-standing legal precedent, we can’t rest on our laurels. Consider the “Mississippi Student Religious Liberties Act of 2013” (SB2633), which became law three months ago. The title alone sounds pretty good—who would stand in the way of religious liberty?
The bill is full of equality language. Religious and secular viewpoints must be treated “in the same manner,” religious groups must be “given the same access,” a school district policy should be such that it “neither favors nor disfavors” religious groups, and so on. The governor’s press release said that the law “protects students from being discriminated against in a public school.” If you hate discrimination and you’re a fan of the First Amendment, what’s not to like?
Pandora’s box
But who decides what is religious? The law gives no test, so apparently the student decides. Religion is what each student tells you it is.
This puts a lot of power into unknown hands. Consider the 2011 case from Austria in which a self-described Pastafarian (member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) won the right to wear his spaghetti strainer—religious headgear, he claimed—for his driver’s license photo. Most of us can remember classmates who would delight in seeing how far they could push a rule like this. Remember that this law would apply to high school students. Might they wear a colander or a swastika (which actually is a religious symbol) or a necklace of an extended middle finger, justifying this as religious expression?
The law also permits religious speech from students at athletic events and in announcements made at the beginning of the school day. This is not allowed for school staff because, as government employees, their speech would be sanctioned by the government. But why imagine that putting it in the mouth of a student avoids this problem? Every student listening is obliged by law to be at school. They’re captive to all religious messages in the morning announcements.
And remember the Colander Problem: “religion” is in the eyes of student. Aside from vulgar language and time limits, the student has the talking stick. The same public forum that allows a Christian to talk about why Jesus is his savior allows the class jester to explain how Druidism or Satanism changed his life. Students can talk to their captive audience about the worldview of Mormonism or Wicca or Islam or (gasp!) atheism. Can the Christian parent want their child to be forced to sit through these daily messages?
The place for “Mormons and Catholics and atheists will broil in hell at 425° Fahrenheit” is in church, not the public school.
Perhaps the biggest failing in this kind of “religious liberty” is the bad light it shines on Christianity. Christian churches are already permitted and subsidized by tax-free status. Christians can already preach in the public square and hand out leaflets on street corners. But apparently that’s not enough. According to the government of Mississippi, Christianity is too weak to compete in the marketplace of ideas and needs a little boost. Home and church aren’t sufficient, and public schools need to be enlisted to fight the good fight. Is it just me who sees this as kinda pathetic?
How this will play out
Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Let’s review what we’ve seen in recent years. In 2007, Seattle-Tacoma airport was decorated for Christmas in a religion-free way after fights the previous year over what religious worldviews would be on display.
Don’t forget the city of Santa Monica, which used a lottery to apportion permission to set up religious displays on public property. When 18 of 21 spots went to atheist and freethought groups for Christmas 2011, Christians belatedly realized that a “let a thousand flowers bloom” policy doesn’t always work out so great. (I explored the “War on Christmas” more here.)
I suspect that we’re seeing in Mississippi the pendulum pushed to such an extreme that this law will swing back to smack the legislature. Once news stories of energetic displays of non-Christian religious freedom bring enough ridicule, I’m guessing that this law will be reconsidered.
Bottom line
You might object that we still have the First Amendment, so we already have a backstop for any excess that gets past this law. But then why have it? Where this law duplicates the First Amendment, it’s redundant, and where it expands religious freedom, it’s illegal. It’s a solution looking for a problem.
But many of you will have already seen the actual purpose of this law. In these days where Christianity is hijacked for the benefit of politicians, the value of this bill is simply posturing. Politicians, who passed the bill almost unanimously, have thumbed their noses at those pencil-necks in Washington and can now brag to voters about their brave support for Jesus.

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people
which declared that their legislature should “make no law
respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,”
 thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
— Thomas Jefferson (letter to Danbury Baptist Assoc., 1802)

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Bible Contradictions to the Trinity

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Let’s remember the key traits of the Trinity. According to the Athanasian Creed,

The Father unlimited; the Son unlimited; and the Holy Ghost unlimited. …
So likewise the Father is Almighty; the Son Almighty; and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not three Almighties; but one Almighty. So the Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God. …
And in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another. …

About Jesus, it says:

Perfect God; and perfect Man …
Who although he is God and Man; yet he is not two, but one Christ.

Okay, okay, I get it. Three persons, all equal. None greater than another. Jesus is unlimited, almighty, and perfect.
But does the Bible agree? Remember that, unlike the clear definition of monotheism in the Koran, the doctrine of the Trinity is not clear. It took almost four centuries to congeal.
Consider some Bible verses that challenge the Trinitarian concept as defined in the creed above. First, verses that portray Jesus as an ordinary person who didn’t know everything, who wasn’t 100% with the program, and who spoke to God as you or I would.

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed (Matt. 8:10)
[Jesus] turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” (Mark 5:30)
[Jesus prayed,] “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matt. 26:39)
Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34)
Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. (Luke 5:16)
You are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. (John 8:40)
[Jesus said,] “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” (John 20:17)

Verses that state that only God has certain traits or abilities.

No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. (Matt. 24:36)
[Jesus said,] “The most important [commandment is:] The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” (Mark 12:29)
God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:15–16)

Verses that portray Jesus as inferior to God.

“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good.” (Matt. 19:17)
[Jesus said,] “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28)
The head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. (1 Cor. 11:3)
The Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28)
You have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. (Col. 3:1, see also 1 Peter 3:22)
There is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5)

Ever-nimble Christian apologists have had 2000 years to find responses to many of these. Perhaps they’ll argue that we’re seeing the limited Man side of Jesus here, not the God side. Or that other verses can be brought in to bolster the Christian position. Nevertheless, the simplest explanation is that the Bible is a collection of books from authors (many unknown) who had similar but not identical religious beliefs, which has been modified in unknown ways over the centuries, and which has no more accuracy in its depiction of the supernatural than the Iliad.
See also: “The Long, Strange Story of the Trinity.”

It ain’t supposed to make sense; it’s faith.
Faith is something that you believe
that nobody in his right mind would believe.
— Archie Bunker

Photo credit: Samuel Livingston